The Transporter Refueled review

Do you remember the original A-Team TV show? They had a stunt that they used every single episode, where a car would roll over – often for no real reason other than some designer had felt a need to install a tree trunk in the centre of the cabin which would fire through the floor at some random moment. The Transporter Refueled has a similar conceit except that any head-on collision (and there are lots) seems to result in at least one vehicle doing the same sort of somersault that countless drunken Russian men seem to fail to do SOOOO badly on Youtube…

There are some in the trailer…

In the office, we have a considerable number of DVDs and the like, many of which are unwatched. Three of these are the original Transporter series. According to Wikipedia there was also a TV show. I haven’t seen that either. I did find Jason Statham quite funny in Lock, Stock and 2 Smoking Barrels but he has been replaced here by Ed Skrein who has been in other stuff (probably Game of Thrones). Mrs L showed a particular lack of desire to go to watch The Transporter Refueled so I gave my self a long Tuesday lunch break. I was joined in the cinema by the man-with-the-ability-to high-pitch-laugh-at-random-things and the man-entering-the-record-books-for-dropping-his-phone-into-the-popcorn-while-constantly-updating-facebook. There may also have been a dead body in row D.

There is a scene with the Audi and some fire-hydrants. I could only find a picture of a BMW in a similar scenario. To Be honest the film just made me feel bad for not washing the car in the last week* (*3 years)

Audi seem to be doing quite well for product placement in films at the moment. I’m fairly sure that the cars in The Transporter Refueled also appeared in Hitman: Agent 47and are/is due its/their own IMDB page. I imagine that they paid a fair amount for the exposure as we get quite a few cut-aways of feet pushing pedals and manly hands doing manly things with gear-sticks. According to a quick search of the (post 50 Shades) internet, Jason Statham is something of a sexual lubricant to a certain proportion of the public. I’m guessing that the bull-testosterone factor has something to do with stamping feet and phallic stick grasping but this isn’t Statham – it’s this other bloke – and to be honest, he seems a little sort of normalish.

There is a story about Russian gangs, prostitutes, money, and father-son relationships in The Transporter Refueled. There are some identikit females who get de-personalised by wigs and a bunch of generic angry mobsters. It all feels like a big budget TV show and at about the 50 minute mark you are kind of wondering where the advert breaks are. It isn’t a bad story, it just gets a little lost in a number of set-pieces.

I honestly had no idea who any of the four female characters were. It doesn’t really seem to be vital to the plot of the movie…

The best bits of The Transporter Refueled (if you are not a fan of stunt driving) are the clipped pieces of dialogue between Skrein and his on-screen father, Ray Stevenson. There is a believable bickering between them that makes you feel that they are “in it together” as far as the film goes.

Should you go? If you are a fan of Fast and Furious type things and read FHM then it is probably not going to cause you to cry over the cost.

Verdict?

Not a bad advert for Audi and about the right length to justify a break from whatever you are meant to be working on. Better than a Minicab, worse than a Black cab – it’s sort of the Uber of action flicks…